FootprintsintheWind.com

Make flames lasting
Make flames personal

:- Doug.

The most effective thing you can do to help your cause is talk with persons. Wherever you can, as much as you can, spread the fire. No thing spreads the fire as persons conversing.

:- Doug.

There are no shortcuts
At every step the work needs persons

:- Doug.

This year’s Christmas gift giving upset me: the kids had so many toys they were not given time to play with them—just open them and then Here is another, Give me that one, Put it down so you can see what else you have.

I do not want gifts of things. Things don’t make me feel better; ideas and imagination do, and you don’t satisfy one with the other.

My preference is to limit the gifts we give to children. If we gave them one or two well-thought-out gifts, things that will allow them to use their imaginations and lead them out into a larger world, to think of others, to give themselves away, then we have done well our jobs as grandparents and parents. If we think of what we value and where we want to lead our grandchildren, then we have done well our tasks. But if we simply heap on by counting numbers and Dollars, then we get the shallow next generations we decry. So let us choose and think out and love.

Let us see what lifts us up, what serves our grandchildren. A cornucopia may not be the best metaphor: what they get is about as deep as the horn goes, and if they keep digging, there is no more stuff. But if we give from our love—our minds and hearts working together—then we have a horn that can never be emptied.

:- Doug.